Reddit will warn users who repeatedly upvote banned content

Reddit will now issue warnings to users who “upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies” within “a certain timeframe,” starting first with violent content, the company announced on Wednesday.

“This will have no impact on the vast majority of users as most already downvote or report abusive content,” a Reddit employee says in the announcement post. In comments on the post, a user expressed concern that the new policy could make people “paranoid about voting,” but the employee says that “this would be an unacceptable side effect, which is why we want to monitor this closely and ramp it up thoughtfully.”

“We have done this in the past for quarantined communities and found that it did help to reduce exposure to bad content, so we are experimenting with this sitewide,” according to the main post. Reddit “may consider” expanding the warnings in the future to cover repeated upvotes of other kinds of actions as well as taking other types of actions in addition to warnings.